Ta Nei – The Hidden Silence

Deep within the forest, where roots weave through ruined lintels and no road remains, Ta Nei waits—half-lost, wholly present. This sanctuary, once consecrated to the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, is now encircled by trees, veiled in lichen, and softened by centuries of solitude. Its weathered stones hold the hush of long-forgotten footsteps and the slow exhale of the earth.

Here, Lucas Varro returns with analogue cameras and a pilgrim’s patience. Each image in this collection is a quiet communion—captured on black-and-white film, shaped through chiaroscuro and hand-toned with reverence. Mist drifts between doorways. A lintel crumbles into shadow. Light rests gently on a carving no longer seen by many eyes.

What emerges is not ruin, but refuge.

Printed on warm, museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper and offered in limited editions, these photographs are portals into Ta Nei’s living silence—a silence that remembers prayer, that receives the forest, and that, in the stillness, returns us to ourselves.